"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible." - Henry David Thoreau

Tax strikes have been used since America's founding as a form of nonviolent protest.

In 1765, the Stamp Act led colonists to disobey King George, refusing to pay for a paper tax they deemed unfair. Soon after, the slogan "No Taxation, Without Representation" became the rallying cry for the Revolutionary War.

From the mid-1800s to the early 20th century, female suffragettes used tax resistance as one of many strategies to earn the right to vote.

During the Vietnam and Iraq Wars of the 1960s and early 2000s, activists again turned to tax resistance to protest the immorality of war and diversion of tax dollars to military spending rather than social causes at home. Some of the more famous tax resisters during the Vietnam War included singer Joan Baez, professor Noam Chomsky, writer Gore Vidal, and feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem.

Today we face a political crisis of a severity that forces us to again look to tax resistance as a nonviolent means of dissent. The issue is one of a President acting in unconstitutional and unethical ways, supported by an aggressively partisan Congress that enables his behavior. Additionally, Republican members of Congress not only support the President's misdeeds, but also obstruct through arbitrary and questionable rule changes their Democrat colleagues' ability to act on behalf of constituents who have demanded transparency.

Pledging tax resistance is a serious action, and one we take only after deep reflection. Having determined that Americans' legitimate grievances will continue being ignored, we feel compelled to follow a higher moral, ethical, religious, or spiritual ethic to ensure taxation with representation by this government.